Kevin McSherry hand painted and digital creative Illustration, Art and Storyboards

Little Fairy Wren. Gilded Acrylics on canvas. For sale €350. 6" x 6" framed behind glass.
Not the wee brown bird of the ancient Irish tradition of hunting the wren (An Dreoilín) on Saint Stephen's Day, but a native bird of Australia. I wish we had more such colourful birds here. Maybe we wouldn't have been buck-lepping around and battering them with sticks...  The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze,
Although he was little his honour was great,
Jump up me lads and give him a treat.

Chorus:
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
And give us a penny to bury the wren.
2. As I was going to Killenaule,
I met a wren upon the wall.
I took me stick and knocked him down,
And brought him in to Carrick Town.

Chorus:3. Droolin, Droolin, where’'s your nest?
Tis in the bush that I love best
In the tree the holly tree,
Where all the boys do follow me.

Chorus:4. We followed the wren three miles or more,
Three mile or more three miles or more.
W…

Lidl seem to be able to tap into my thoughts. A couple of weeks ago, after spending almost €50 at Woodworkers getting some MDF cut down into squares for painting supports for my students, [they charge €1.80 per cut] I decided to invest in one of these lads. The cheapest I could find in the specialist tool shops was around €199, with a possible €40 to buy a new, finer blade for cutting MDF.
Next thing is Lidl put this one on offer at €130. This isn't the first time they've had just what I was looking for at the moment when I needed it. How do they do that? What other private thoughts are they reading? Am I that bloody predictable?
Just one thing, though: The only problem so far is the 'eccentric lever' which is supposed to lock the 'fence' [the moveable guide to which you knock up the wood to be cut]. After a couple of cuts, it loosened and now won't stay in position; I have to keep it fixed with a G clamp . At 1700 watts, the blade cuts very well and the mac…

A few weeks ago, the Irish Times published their annual Christmas gifts supplement. They had contacted me previously about my web site, www.irishdailypaintings.com where I sell my small oils painting studies, with a suggestion to insert an article on it. 
It demonstrated to me why print is still vital for advertising. There's something reassuring to buyers about a write up in a newspaper. You can pour all the searchable tags you like into a web site to drive people to your online presence but at the end of it, many people don't see material published on the web as verifiable and authentic. We all know from the movies that a newspaper office is full of caffeine-fuelled editors and journalists, with sleeves all rolled up, endlessly fighting to find the truth. So we know that all the material has been researched by the hacks and verified by a growling cigar-chomping ed, don't we? And that's a good thing. On the internet, it has been said, nobody knows you're a dog; any…